A Killing on the Platform

At dawn in the rail town of Slate Ridge, a ticket clerk is found dead on the station platform—shot clean, left where everyone can see, and quickly forgotten by a town that survives on silence.

Gideon Cross steps off a train with no badge and no reason to stay—except that someone noticed something they weren't meant to, and paid for it in blood. Freight goes missing. Schedules don't match. Men who ask questions vanish into unlogged cars bound for nowhere.

Cross stays.

As corruption tightens its...